Father's Colleague

A vein pops out on Mr. Fulton's forehead. "Boy, do you know who you are talking to?" His voice is now deeper and originates from his chest.

The audacity this man has to make him believe he should be the one getting mad is unbelievable.

"Do YOU, sir, know who you are talking to?" I say back to him while pointing my finger down in his face.

Mr. Fulton's cheeks are turning red.

"Oh ho ho. It seems like all praise has made you cocky, boy," he puffs out, "Don't you ever forget that you are just riding on your father's coattails. Without our help, you will be nothing! You hear me?! Nothing!"

The end of his sentence echoes around in the spacious lobby.

"Oh, no," Cisca says.

He has done it. I have been trying to keep myself composed while dealing with this conceited bastard, but now, my soul has begun boiling from the flames in my chest.

I slam the table in front of me and yell at him, "My father?! My father has done nothing for this company compared to me! When I took over at seventeen, Kaplan Corp was worth no more than 50 billion! Look at it now! Nine years with me in charge, it's over 30 trillion! Your pomposity is laughable, my friend, to think that I, Kris Kaplan, would be nothing without your help! Well, we haven't received your help for the past nine years, and we have grown sixty thousand fucking percent! What you meant to say is that YOU will be nothing without ME!"

I have to pause to catch my breath. My rage is causing me to pant heavily. Mr. Fulton is glowing ear to ear now, but his mouth is sealed. There is nothing for him to say back to me.

"Y-You are a disgrace to your father's name, brat," Mr. Fulton says. He turns around to snatch his laptop and storms out of the lobby.

I shake the collar on my suit and try to regain my composure. That went about as well as I thought it would. I realize that I have attracted the eyes of everyone else present, but they all snap their heads back to whatever they were looking at once they see me glancing around.

"How insolent," I mutter and walk back to Sophia and Cisca. They stand still while watching me head toward them, the former of whom has slight sweat running down her forehead, and the latter has an amused smile.

"I told you to go easy," Cisca says.

"Oh, I could have gone much harder," I tell her with no hint of irony in my voice.

I can see Sophia shudder from the corner of my eye.

"W-With all due respect, sir, you are really s-scary sometimes," Sophia half-whispers.

"One of the requirements to hold the most powerful position in the world, that's all."

"But you are not-"

"Shh- Cisca, don't we have somewhere to go?" I ask.

"Oh yeah. That's right," Cisca says.

I turn to Sophia. "Is there anything else you need from me?"

"N-No. T-That's was it."

"Great. Cisca and I have some business to attend to. Please hold down the fort while I am gone."

"Sure."

I put my hand on Sophia shoulder and give her a trusting smile. She doesn't know that she probably will never see me again, but there is no need for me to say goodbye or anything. Sophia is only doing her job, and so am I.

"Alright. Shall we get going?" I ask Cisca and take my hand off the confused Sophia.

"Of course."

I walk away with Cisca toward the elevators in the hallway beside the reception desk, leaving Sophia alone in the once again quiet lobby.

"That just ruined my day," I say with a sigh. Cisca steps up and presses a button beside the elevator.

BEEP. The metal doors slide to the sides immediately, showing our way into the bright cabin.

"Spectacular performance, though," Cisca says and smiles.

The two of us walk in. This elevator can only go up to the fiftieth floor out of the 180 in total, but up is not the direction we have in mind. After the doors close, Cisca punches in a sequence using the floor buttons. An electric whirring sound is heard as she finishes pressing the last one,

A hand-sized square of metal below the arrays of buttons pushes into the wall. It then pulls into the side, revealing a black panel behind it.

Cisca presses her palm against the panel, and a few seconds later, the light in the elevator flashes. Cisca takes her hand off. The metal square pulls back up and covers the handprint sensor panel, leaving no seams around it, becoming completely undetectable.

The screen displaying the floor number turns black. The elevator shakes slightly, and we begin moving downward.

It still impresses me how Cisca accomplished all this by herself. No architects were involved as we wanted to keep everything as secretive as possible. Are there no limits to what this freak of a genius can do?

"You know," she begins to speak, "Even though I have been working with you for over seven years by now, I've never known the reason why you hate your father's associates that much, and I don't think anyone else knows, so break it to me. I'm curious."

I glance over at her and stay silent. She has no mockery behind her dark blue eyes.

After five seconds of me not saying anything, Cisca speaks up again, "Come on, there is a chance that I will be the last person you will ever talk to. Plus, what can I do with the information? I am purely asking out of curiosity."

She's got a point. I guess there are no reasons to hold anything from my possibly sole companion for the next centuries.

"You have a great relationship with your parents, so you probably won't understand," I say.

"That doesn't matter. Tell me anyways," she says.

I hesitate for a little while longer, but eventually, I give in. It's not like there's anything there worth keeping a secret of anyways, so I start talking, "As you probably know, my mother died during delivery."

"Yeah. I am sure almost every single person on Earth knows that at this point, with 'the motherless billionaire' and all that."

"That's true, but what people don't know is that after the incident, my father buried himself in grief and work."

Cisca's face lights up in realization.

"Oh, I get it. So you hold spite for your father's colleagues because, in a way, they took your father's love away from you?" She says.

"What? No, why would I care about love?"

Cisca snickers and shakes her head. "Well, then what is it?"

"You see…"